Lee Martin - Late One Night

A hole in the siding of the trailer, down low, just before the concrete slab. A ragged hole as big as a boot heel right where he knew the wall furnace was. A hole, he assumed, one of the goats had made at some time or the other.

“It was the most amazing thing,” he said. “Like it was a sign to me, an invitation to do something other than what I’d come to do.”

He crouched down and put his finger into the hole. It went all the way through the siding and the insulation and the drywall. He could feel the back of the furnace. It was hot when he touched it, and he knew that meant it was still running. Why, then, had Della taken the kids to her folks, as he assumed from the fact that she hadn’t answered the phone when he called?

“I got to thinking what would happen if a gust of wind came through that hole and blew out the pilot light. I wondered what it meant that right then, when I’d been determined to burn the place down, I was thinking about that pilot light. It came to me, then: Here’s a chance to do something good, and if you do this one good thing, maybe then you can do another and then another, and before long you’ll have your life back on track . That hole was my chance to save myself. I was so close, you see, to doing something I’d never be able to live down. Burn that trailer and then walk away. But now I had this chance to do something different, patch that hole. Then I’d be able to go home and think better about myself.”

That’s when he put the cap back on the gas can. He took out his pocketknife. He opened up his coat and grabbed the bottom of his T-shirt with his hand. It was his Sun Records T-shirt, the one that Brandi had found for him at the Goodwill, and yet he didn’t think about how much it pleased him, nor how much he loved Brandi. He thought only of needing something to stuff into that hole.

He pressed the point of his knife into the T-shirt, down around the bottom, just enough to make a place where he could grab the cloth and rip it. Working with his hand and the knife, he managed to tear away a strip that was sufficient for the task. He wadded it up and stuck it into the hole.

“My fingers were stiff with the cold,” he told the deputy, “and I fumbled my knife and it fell to the ground. I’d just started to feel around for it when I heard a noise. It was Shooter Rowe’s boy, Wesley, the one they call Captain. He was coming around the end of the trailer, headed for the goat pen. I stood dead still and hoped he wouldn’t see me.”

Ronnie watched Captain open the gate to the pen and step inside. The goats were bleating, and Ronnie could hear Captain moving about, his boots whisking through the loose straw on the ground. Once, he cursed. Said, “Goddamn it.” Then, after a time, he came out with one of the nannies, something tied around her neck. He was leading it with a length of something, and he had a kid up under his other arm.

“By this time, I’d gotten over behind the back steps, and I crouched down,” Ronnie said. “I was afraid for him to see me. I didn’t know what I’d say about why I was there.”

Captain went around the other side of the trailer, and Ronnie couldn’t make up his mind whether to go or stay. He wanted to go — wanted to get as far away from there as he could — but he was afraid that if he made a move, Captain would spot him. It was hard for Ronnie to tell where he was. And, too, he was curious about why Captain had come for those goats.

It wasn’t long before he was back, and he led out the other nanny. Again, he had her kid under his arm.

“I thought it was curious,” Ronnie said. “Like he’d come to steal those goats. I thought, What in the world? ”

The deputy said, “So it was you and the boy out there?”

Ronnie opened his eyes. “Yes,” he said. “It was the two of us. I was just waiting to see what would happen next.”

Captain remembered what his father had said when they’d patched Della’s fence that afternoon: Sometimes it’s best to start over. Put a match to that fence .

All evening, he’d thought about that, how if that pen and shed were gone, then he and his father could build a better shed, a better pen, and then the goats wouldn’t get out. Della would have that one less thing to worry about, and Captain felt good knowing he could give her that. It was only right after she’d been so kind to him.

His plan was to lead the goats one by one across the road to his father’s barn and leave them there while he got down to work. He had a box of Diamond matches, the ones he used when he burned the trash. He knew there was straw in the shed behind the goat pen. Dry enough even on a cold night to catch and burn. The wood planks of that shed and pen were dry too. It’d be a snap. It’d all go up so quick. He knew his father was asleep in front of the television, and wouldn’t he be surprised when he found out what he’d done?

Della would be surprised too, and so would Ronnie.

When Captain slipped out of the house that night, he remembered to put on his bomber jacket, and he grabbed his sock hat and his gloves. He spotted Ronnie’s Firebird pulled off alongside the blacktop. He didn’t know what to make of that, and he really didn’t have time to think on it. He had to keep his mind on what he was going to do.

Half of the shed was a lean-to, open to the east, facing the blacktop. A doorway cut into the interior wall of the lean-to led to the closed part of the shed, and that’s where the goats had gone to lie down in the straw, where they could be away from the brunt of the wind.

Captain realized he needed something to use for a lead. Otherwise, how would he get those goats across the road to his father’s barn?

That’s what he was wondering as he stood in the pen’s shed.

Then he thought of the bales of straw. Just enough light from the snow cover outside coming in through the doorway helped him find the bales, and in an instant it all clicked inside his head, and he knew what he’d do. A great happiness spread through him. The light from the snow cover, the straw bales — it all meant that someone was helping him to do the thing he’d come to do. It meant that what he intended was right.

He couldn’t get at his knife with his gloves on, so he slipped his hands out and stuffed the gloves into his jacket pockets. He opened the blade of the knife and felt it lock into place. Then he bent over and grabbed one of the strands of twine that held the bale together.

Just as he was ready to cut it — he’d use it for a lead — the billy goat, Methuselah, butted his head against him and the blade slipped and gashed the hock of his left thumb. He felt the cold air sting the flayed skin, and he knew right away he was bleeding.

“Goddamn it,” he said.

Then he went back to work. He cut the twine and then made a slip knot around the neck of the first goat. He’d save the cantankerous one, Methuselah, for last.

The other four were agreeable. The two nannies let him lead them across the road to his father’s barn with little complaint. He was able to carry one of the kids on each trip.

He put his gloves back on, blood soaking into the left one. When it came time to loop the twine around Methuselah’s neck, the goat balked, jerking his head this way and that, filling the shed with his bleats. Captain kept at it, finally getting the job done, and Methuselah let him lead him a few steps before he dug in and refused to go any farther. Captain tugged hard on the lead. That’s when the twine snapped. He went stumbling backwards, falling on his butt on the frozen ground.

That made him mad. First the cut on his hand and now this. He could feel time ticking away, and he still had so much to do.

Methuselah kicked up straw with his hind hooves. Captain decided to leave him alone. He needed to get back to work.